White Pawn, Black Knight
by Seraphine Gearhardt
Summary: An early morning visit to his mother's grave reunites Anduin with an old friend. The world teeters on the edge of a knife.


**Oneshot - Set in the events between** _ **Warlords of Draenor**_ **and** _ **Legion**_ **.  
All characters and settings belong to Blizzard Entertainment.  
This could potentially turn into a longer story with additional _Legion_ information!  
All critique/commentary welcome!**

 _White Pawn, Black Knight_  
_

The morning mist crept easily about the churchyard. The fading starlight shimmered feebly in the snow, and the frosty grass crunched softly beneath Anduin's slippers. He often dreamed that he and his mother walked the cathedral gardens at dawn. He dreamed that she sang to him, that her voice was high and clear, and that she loved him intensely. He'd had such a dream that very night, and the memory of her had brought him here.

 _Tiffin Ellerian Wrynn_ , read her gravestone.  
 _Queen of Stormwind  
Fair and just, a wit as quick as her smile.  
May the Light inherit your warmth,  
For our world grows cold in your absence._

Anduin's spine shivered, as it always did at those words. He instinctively reached for the Light, its fire surging through him like the tide. He liked to imagine that, indeed, it was his mother's warmth that enveloped him. Draenei priests believed, like the stonecarver, that the souls of the departed became one with the Light, and in embracing that glorious, divine power, their presence could be felt once again.

But Anduin had never felt his mother's presence. He ran his fingers over the engraving, and the chill of it extinguished the Light from his body.

"My sad little prince," drawled a silky voice. "My wilting dandelion, your tears break my fiery black heart."

Wrathion, robed in black, with his dusky skin and dark hair, seemed almost to meld into his surroundings; a shimmering, silent shadow. His red, red eyes bored lazily into Anduin's.

"How did you get into the city?"

Wrathion laughed. A hollow, mirthless laugh Anduin had come to know well. "Your aching soul called to me, and no barrier could keep me from you."

"Have you taken up as a dramatist in your travels?" Anduin said scathingly, determined to show that he too could sneer and drip sarcasm. "You should put on a jester's cap and croak your drivel at _The Gilded Rose_. Or perhaps _The Slaughtered Lamb_ would be more your element?"

"Dear me, I hope my absence hasn't turned you into a cynic. Are you still angry with me?"

"Don't touch me."

"My pretty prince," Wrathion said sadly. Anduin could almost believe it. "Let me dry those tears."

"I said _don't touch me! Guar—!_ "

Wrathion was behind him in a flash. A gloved hand silenced him before he could scream. He was taller, Anduin noticed, stronger than the last time he'd seen him.

"I missed you, too," Wrathion said in a sultry whisper, his lips hovering dangerously over Anduin's neck. "Say you'll forgive me." He tightened his grip. Anduin, struggling to breathe, felt the chiseled muscles in the Black Prince's arm flex. "Say it."

"I—forgive you..."

" _Good!_ Now say you love me."

"You're insane."

Wrathion tensed. Another flash and Anduin lay pinned against a wall, the air knocked from his lungs. A silver haze danced across his vision. When it cleared, his face was inches from Wrathion's, whose lazy red eyes smoldered with a hidden fire Anduin had only guessed at before.

"I am not my father, Anduin Wrynn," he hissed, his voice like silk over steel. Anduin refused to cower, but his heart thumped against his chest, and his eyes must've betrayed all emotion, because Wrathion's face softened, and he was gentle in his release.

Wrathion's cloak slithered against the snowy grass as he approached Tiffin's monument. He, too, traced the engraved words delicately.

"Our world grows cold indeed," he said after a while. "That torch-juggler Khadgar didn't stray far from the mark, squawking about the end of the world in your throne room."

"How do you know about that?"

Wrathion scoffed, yawned, and said nothing for a long time.

"Why did you do it? Free Garrosh."

"That will, I think, become apparent soon."

"Tell me why—" Wrathion rounded on him suddenly, and he was met again with that seething gaze, and the peculiar sensation of his soul being exposed.

"In the coming months," Wrathion sighed, his eyes penetrating deeper into Anduin's mind, "felfire will rain from the skies, and you will sail with your people into a broken shore. I sense you will have great need of me. You will find me, I think, among the herd."

He leaned in softly, softly, snaking an arm around the boy's waist, his hair falling in dark, rippling waves over his eyes. Anduin's cheeks flared at his touch, his lips parted, trembled, his skin pimpled. He heard Wrathion inhale deeply, his long fingers reaching underneath Anduin's flimsy nightshirt. Anduin again found himself thrust up against a wall. The pressure was exhilarating. A rogue moan escaped him, and—

And four sharp fangs were driven into the side of his neck. He shoved Wrathion away furiously, and a rage pulsed through his veins unlike anything he'd felt in a long time.

"You will need that!" crooned the Black Prince, grinning shamelessly. "That primal fury. Don't disregard it. Look for me!"

Where Wrathion had been there now stood a dragon, not the tiny whelpling Anduin remembered from Pandaria, but a supple-limbed, fully-formed black menace. His webbed wings, spanning the length of Tiffin's enclosure, dispelled the mist and carried him away into the rising, radiant sun.

Droplets of blood stained the snow at Anduin's feet.


End file.
